“It is no exaggeration to say that the men and women in blue patrolling the streets of the United States have been given a license to kill—and have demonstrated a consistent propensity to use it. More often than not, police violence, including murder and attempted murder, is directed at African Americans.”

With this quote, Taylor introduces a central focus of the book—police brutality and its disproportionate impact on Black Americans. The focus on police brutality is an entry point for Taylor. She connects it to a more pervasive structural inequality that is the result of the racist political economy of capitalism.

“This crisis goes beyond high incarceration rates; indeed the perpetuation of deeply ingrained stereotypes of African Americans as particularly dangerous, impervious to pain and suffering, careless and carefree, and exempt from empathy, solidarity, or basic humanity is what allows the police to kill Black people with no threat of punishment.”

Here, Taylor identifies the problem of anti-Black stereotypes that are used to absolve the state of its perpetuation of structural inequality. The promulgation of anti-Black stereotypes obscures institutional racism and instead locates Black inequality in perceived inherent Black inferiority and Black behavior, culture, and family. Blaming Black people for Black hardship is the subject of Chapter 1.

“In other words, the radical movement of ordinary Black people has forced the federal government and its leader, the most powerful political figure in the world, to account for the war against Black life. The challenge, of course, will be going from recognizing Black humanity to changing the institutions responsible for its degradation.”

This quote underscores a theme central to the book—that Black resistance prompts attention to structural inequality. It also raises the question of how BLM moves from protests as its primary action towards effecting institutional transformation.